War and Peace

[MishaK]

Yeah and when Einstein presented his case for second party verification, the 8 member board of reviews look at each other  WTF     (this last smiley went nuts after reviewing the science)

Paul, you are evidently unfamiliar with it, but observational and experimentational methods to prove Einstein right were not available at the time. They are now and his theories have held up marvellously under scrutiny.

[Sean]

Menschy, quantum mechanics defies scientific objectivity in the sense that there's no meaningful result to experiments that try to determine fundamental variables until someone does the experiment and looks at the result. This is the collapse of the wave-function, God playing dice, or Schrodinger's dead/alive/undead cat.

Listen, man to man, you want to quit with the twerpish spiteful little sallies and broaden your horizons a bit. Didn't you say you were married or something like that? Has it done you any good? You sound like an obnoxious schoolboy with a head full of cute scientific ideas and no friends.

[Ephemerid]

Listen, man to man, you want to quit with the twerpish spiteful little sallies and broaden your horizons a bit. Didn't you say you were married or something like that? Has it done you any good? You sound like an obnoxious schoolboy with a head full of cute scientific ideas and no friends.

WTF??? 

[drogulus]

All real knowledge is organized in such a way as to make plain how it is arrived at.

Except the knowledge of the knower; the Self, the absolute or God is the axis of reality that all of relative science depends on. It can't be made plain or foregrouded, only understood intuitively. And ultimately our relation with all the world is not subject-object, but the subject-subject relation of the Self- because external reality is in fact contained within our own consciousness (as per quantum physics and post-foundationist epstemology is beginning to understand).

     You're talking about consciousness, and how the subjective can't be captured by objective description. Though it's difficult, it's possible to study consciousness with third-person techniques. We can learn truths about experiences and not just have them. Sam Harris, who is one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, thinks that we should study Eastern mysticism in an objective manner. In this way, instead of free-form interpretation we can bring meditation under the kind of scrutiny that will tell us what is true about it. If there is value in having a mind turned off, a turned on mind will be able to find out.

      The study of nature doesn't kill the wonder of it. Einstein said it is the scientists who are the real believers. He was right. The universe is beautiful and wonderful in a way that makes the fantasies of religion seem like cheap costume jewellery. The story of science is just as deeply inspiring as any religious myth, and has the added advantage of being true.

[Sean]

drogulus, I think we need to go back to our common idea that there's limited distinction to make between the scientific and the spritual: notice that it's inspiration leading the scientists' way not their concepts per se...

[MishaK]

Menschy, quantum mechanics defies scientific objectivity in the sense that there's no meaningful result to experiments that try to determine fundamental variables until someone does the experiment and looks at the result. This is the collapse of the wave-function, God playing dice, or Schrodinger's dead/alive/undead cat.

Sean, you are clueless. Educate yourself. Start here.

In physics, quantum mechanics is the study of the relationship between energy quanta (radiation) and matter, in particular that between valence shell electrons and photons. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics with wide applications in both experimental and theoretical physics. Quantum theory generalizes all classical theories, including mechanics, electromagnetism (except general relativity), and provides accurate descriptions for many previously unexplained phenomena such as black body radiation and stable electron orbits.The effects of quantum mechanics are typically not observable on macroscopic scales, but become evident at the atomic and subatomic level.

There is nothing about it that "defies scientific objectivity".

Listen, man to man, you want to quit with the twerpish spiteful little sallies and broaden your horizons a bit. Didn't you say you were married or something like that? Has it done you any good? You sound like an obnoxious schoolboy with a head full of cute scientific ideas and no friends.

Ad hominems, I see. You must be very jealous indeed. Sean, I'm sorry, but a single monolingual white guy holed up in an insufficiently lit room in a constantly rainy country, who can't even play an instrument and has no scientific background whatsoever and no worthwhile degrees of any educational institution of repute just is in no position whatsoever to dish out this sort of bull and lecture others on "broadening their horizons". You can't even see the f-ing horizon in England! You need to go back to all your so-called teachers, starting with kindergarten, and demand a tuition/tax refund on your and your parents' behalf. They have all failed miserably at teaching you anything.

drogulus, I think we need to go back to our common idea that there's limited distinction to make between the scientific and the spritual: notice that it's inspiration leading the scientists' way not their concepts per se...

No, not "inspiration", curiosity and necessity. Science is just a very advanced form of experimentation out of curiosity.

[drogulus]

drogulus, I think we need to go back to our common idea that there's limited distinction to make between the scientific and the spritual: notice that it's inspiration leading the scientists' way not their concepts per se...

     Any valid distinction to be made will be an objective one. If you want to turn inspiration into knowledge you must resort to objectivity. Quantum mechanics was elucidated and verified by scientists, and whatever superficial resemblance to what some yogi said, it's the verification that permits us to say something is true.

     The strategic retreat of obscurantism should be observed carefully. When they were kicked out of geology and astronomy, they moved to biology. Darwin kicked them out of biology, so they move to consciousness (the move is not complete, the ID'ers are fighting a rear-guard action). Consciousness is hard to study, and we have a long way to go before we can say we understand it well. But Sean, you're right that this is where the action will be. The spiritual and the scientific can be unified (as Einstein exemplified), but only a verificationist ethic can make sense of the union and generate truthful claims about it.

[Maciek]

Sorry, I'm a latecomer to this discussion but I feel obliged to add a little to what was the main topic here very early on (correct some misapprehensions). So if you're following only the latest developments just skip this post.

OK, here goes. This is very tricky for me, as I'm obviously an "interested" party but I'll try my best to stick to the facts. Though it is very difficult to write about some of these things sine ira et studio...

I think WWII had a clear moral winner: Poland. Attacked from three sides by the crushingly superior forces of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union (aided by tiny Slovakian forces), wiped off the map for the third or fourth time, suffering a devastating Nazi and Soviet occupation, abandoned shamefully by their British "allies" in the hands of the Soviets the Poles somehow managed to reborn from their ashes and are a hard nut to crack for Germany and Russia even today.

My hat off to Poland!

There's a lot of truth in what you say but there are several facts which should not be forgotten.

1. The Polish seizure of Vilnius in 1919 and then again in 1920. No matter how large the Polish "minority" was, this was the historical capital of Lithuania. But Poles never really treated Lithuania as an independent state...

2. The Riga peace treaty of 1921 where Poland plainly (and very foolishly - what goes around comes around!) betrayed its closest allies: Belarus and Ukraine (this was a separatist peace wherein Poland simply abandoned them).

3. And most importantly: the Polish annexation of the Zaolzie region in 1938 (the Polish government cynically took advantage of the Nazi threat).

Ostensibly, all of this has little to do with what happened during WWII itself. However, it is important to remember that Poland did not exactly have a "clear conscience".

It is also true that there was lots of antisemitism in interwar Poland, though I have never heard of any pogroms happening here before WWII (I believe someone suggested there were but now can't find the appropriate quote?). The word itself is Russian, and I believe these were the Russian tzar's speciality? So, yes, antisemitism - yes. But it is one thing to make it difficult for Jews to pursue scientific careers (for example), and quite another to support their extermination!

Which brings me to the next point:

Poland cannot at all be considered a "clear moral winner" if you take into account how eagerly the Polish population assisted their German occupiers in exterminating the local Jews. They love shoving that part of their history under the rug.

Well, you said it yourself:

I am not as familiar with the Polish case

Why even broach the subject if you know so little about it? Have you so much as leafed through Neighbours or any other book on the subject (there are more!)?

But first things first. First of all, I find your post deeply offensive. There may be a very small kernel of truth in what you are saying (I'll come to that in a minute) but most of it is an outright falsity, worded in such away that I'm really at a loss: what exactly was your intention?? Later in the discussion you claimed to oppose broad generalizations such as "collective guilt". Well, the above quote belies that later statement.

But again, "the reel is going to fast". Your two short sentences are such a tangle that it is very difficult to analyze them point by point. But I promised you facts, so here they are:

re "the Polish population":
You mean all of it? Including Polish Jews?

1. More than 1/4 of the Righteous Among the Nations are Poles.

2. This despite the fact that occupied Poland had the strictest regulations against helping Jews of all the occupied countries: if you helped a Jew you were immediately sentenced to (and punished by) death, along with every single member of your household!!! For some reason, no other occupied country had a law that strict (OK, perhaps Ukraine did ).

2a. This is only remotely connected but Poles were the only nationality that could not (whether they wanted to or not) enroll into German military service!

re "shoving that part of their history under the rug":
How could you even tell? Do you know Polish? Which Polish history books deny there being "collaborators" and the like?

3. The phenomenon of szmalcwonictwo has been described in the literature of the subject from the very beginning. How could it not be? Everyone knew about it!

re "eagerly assisted their German occupiers in exterminating the local Jews":

4. You are apparently forgetting the fact that all the while Poland had a Polish government (in exile) and its own (underground) law-enforcement forces: a police and army in one. Now szmalcownictwo was according to the law practised by the Polish Home Army an act of treason punishable by death. People were actually sentenced to death and the sentences were carried out! You seem to be implying that the "Polish population" should be judged based on the illegal acts of szmalcownicy who were treated by the underground system as dangerous criminals. But that way any "nation" would seem despicable because there are criminals in every nation... (Oh, well. Since we agreed that "collective guilt" is a suspicious category I suppose this is a moot point anyway. I shouldn't be even arguing against it...)

re "the rug" again:

5. Perhaps you mean pogroms like the ones in Jedwabne, Rzadziłłów, Wąsocz and Tykocin? I don't think any historical occurrence has been more widely discussed in the Polish press in the last decade than the Jedwabne pogrom. How is that "shoving that part of history under the rug"??

6. All of these were or are being officially investigated by the Institute of National Remembrance.

re "eagerly assisted" and "Polish population" again:

7.There is not one case of a pogrom where evidence would not be at least ambiguous as to whether the perpetrators acted out of their free will: German troops were always present! The Polish leaders of the Jedwabne pogrom were NKVD agents!!!

Now to the "kernel of truth":
The pogroms weren't widely discussed for many, many years. But then: what's so surprising about that? First of all, after the pogrom in Kielce (the one Johan mentioned) any open discussion of such occurrences was impossible (it was blocked by communist authorities - perhaps to prevent the spreading of the "Soviet-inspiration" interpretation?). But apart from that: would you actually expect the perpetrators of those atrocities to just start talking about them for the sheer fun of the memories? And besides, it is also a normal trait of human psychology to dismiss descriptions of atrocities as made up or overblown (think of the reaction of the American Jewish community to European Jews' tales of the concentration camps etc.). The fact is, however, that now that these pogroms have been revealed - they are actually popular knowledge! Much more so than, for example, the interwar antisemitism. So that's not the kernel of truth I meant. The real kernel of truth is that there is indeed very little research on the subject going on at the moment. Which does not however mean there is none (I already mentioned the IPN investigations - which perhaps put off other historians) - only less than you would expect, considering how crowded the field of WWII history is and how difficult it is to find a "fresh" subject.

or did the polish really have this undercurrent of antisemitism in their blood?

Wow, you're actually a racist! How interesting...

This moral question becomes even more acute in the thorny case of the 'Judenräte' (Jewish Councils) the Nazis set up in some occupied countries (Netherlands, Poland). These were organisations run by Jews who had, at first more or less unknowingly, to help at their own destruction.

I may not be informed well enough but I believe most of the members of the Jewish Councils and the "blue police" were quite aware of the fate that befell their victims. It appears however that they actually believed that by cooperating with the Nazis they would somehow evade that same fate themselves. (Perhaps that's what you meant, though...?)

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I may not be informed well enough but I believe most of the members of the Jewish Councils and the "blue police" were quite aware of the fate that befell their victims. It appears however that they actually believed that by cooperating with the Nazis they would somehow evade that same fate themselves. (Perhaps that's what you meant, though...?)

Hello, Maciek! When the ghettos were set up, the industrial killing of people we call the 'Holocaust' hadn't yet started. This was only decided in 1942, at the Wannsee Conference. Before that you had the so-called 'Einsatzgruppen', mobile units that shot thousands and thousands of Jewish men, women and children. To cut a terrible story short: news of what happened to those deported to the camps gradually filtered through. Adam Czerniakow, leader of the Warsaw Judenrat, committed suicide, because he couldn't find it in himself to cooperate with the Germans in the killing of his own people. Chaim Rumkowski in Lodz, on the other hand, did everything to keep the ghetto going (possibly banking on a Russian breakthrough), and he sacrificed people towards that end, with the idea that it was better that a majority was saved. In the Netherlands news of the real nature of the camps was more of a grisly rumor at first. But gradually it was clear that people would never return and that 'Auschwitz' meant death.

[Maciek]

Ah, I see what you mean. What I had in mind were situations like the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. It's been a long time since I read any "ghetto literature" (Krall, Edelman etc.) but I do remember the moral situations were quite extreme and many really believed they would actually save themselves by cooperating with their executioners...

[MishaK]

Maciek,

Sorry if I offended you by unclear wording. But I think you are overreacting a tad. My simple point was that Florestan made Poland out to be some exceptionally virtuous country. That simply isn't the case. Like all occupied territories, there were collaborators and there were those who resisted. It would be silly to collectively punish or collectively elevate one nation based on the acts of a few. I have said elsewhere in this thread that I condemn collective punishment and my comment certainly wasn't meant as a collective condemnation of all Poles.

re "the Polish population":
You mean all of it? Including Polish Jews?

I never made such an absurdly broad claim. If we are going to debate this fairly then don't set up straw man arguments so you can shoot them down more easliy.

1. More than 1/4 of the Righteous Among the Nations are Poles.

We are talking about individuals here. It is not surprising to find such a large number when Poland had such a large Jewish population to begin with.

re "shoving that part of their history under the rug":

...

3. The phenomenon of szmalcwonictwo has been described in the literature of the subject from the very beginning. How could it not be? Everyone knew about it!

re "eagerly assisted their German occupiers in exterminating the local Jews":

4. You are apparently forgetting the fact that all the while Poland had a Polish government (in exile) and its own (underground) law-enforcement forces: a police and army in one. Now szmalcownictwo was according to the law practised by the Polish Home Army an act of treason punishable by death. People were actually sentenced to death and the sentences were carried out! You seem to be implying that the "Polish population" should be judged based on the illegal acts of szmalcownicy who were treated by the underground system as dangerous criminals. But that way any "nation" would seem despicable because there are criminals in every nation... (Oh, well. Since we agreed that "collective guilt" is a suspicious category I suppose this is a moot point anyway. I shouldn't be even arguing against it...)

Precisely. But conversely, no nation can be collectively especially virtuous either when among them were those who did participate in persection of the Jews.

re "the rug" again:

5. Perhaps you mean pogroms like the ones in Jedwabne, Rzadziłłów, Wąsocz and Tykocin? I don't think any historical occurrence has been more widely discussed in the Polish press in the last decade than the Jedwabne pogrom. How is that "shoving that part of history under the rug"??

6. All of these were or are being officially investigated by the Institute of National Remembrance.

But that was my point (BTW I provided a cite to Jedbawne as a specific example in one of my earlier posts - you must have missed that). The serious review and reflection upon these is very recent. It was indeed rather ignored during the prior four, five decades since the war. So this isn't as ingrained in the memory of the younger population as similar crimes are, say, among the German population. And there still is a segment of the population in Poland today that is resisting such revew and reflection (like all nationalists do everywhere, which doesn't mean they are anti-semites, only that they can't deal with what they perceive as the slightest stain on their country's reputation). Communism all across Eastern Europe acted as a a massive rug to cover up all unpleasant parts of WWII history that didn't suit Communist propaganda - it was no different in the former Yugoslavia where my family is from.

Now to the "kernel of truth":
The pogroms weren't widely discussed for many, many years. But then: what's so surprising about that? First of all, after the pogrom in Kielce (the one Johan mentioned) any open discussion of such occurrences was impossible (it was blocked by communist authorities - perhaps to prevent the spreading of the "Soviet-inspiration" interpretation?). But apart from that: would you actually expect the perpetrators of those atrocities to just start talking about them for the sheer fun of the memories? And besides, it is also a normal trait of human psychology to dismiss descriptions of atrocities as made up or overblown (think of the reaction of the American Jewish community to European Jews' tales of the concentration camps etc.). The fact is, however, that now that these pogroms have been revealed - they are actually popular knowledge! Much more so than, for example, the interwar antisemitism. So that's not the kernel of truth I meant. The real kernel of truth is that there is indeed very little research on the subject going on at the moment. Which does not however mean there is none (I already mentioned the IPN investigations - which perhaps put off other historians) - only less than you would expect, considering how crowded the field of WWII history is and how difficult it is to find a "fresh" subject.

My point exactly. Communism is at the root of the fact that among many generations of Eastern Europeans generally a lot of the darker sides of one's country's WWII history is simply not known. That is why the present more open discussions (and the resulting art and literature) is so important. Sorry, if my earlier posts were too brief and unsusbtantiated and led you to believe I was making far more sweeping generalizations and condemnations. That wasn't my intention.

[Sean]

Miles, well I agree with the bit about the weather. In fact I really think it's disgusting here.

drogulus, you underestimate the complexities arising once the subject edges its way into experiments and the verification process, as it does in quantum mechanics. Indeed it seems that consciousness makes real the material world around us- it actually depends on us to say that it's there for it to be there: photons from objects billions of light years and billions of years old from the distant universe behave in the same observer-dependent way, meaning that they only come into existence as very old once we see them.

[Maciek]

Sorry if I offended you by unclear wording. But I think you are overreacting a tad.

I would have found it just as preposterous if you mentioned "how eagerly the German population exterminated the local Jews". It's the words "population" (which implies some sort of massive movement with hardly an exception) and "eagerly" (which implies some sort of collective sadistic pleasure) that I oppose to. But I see that I misunderstood - you've made your point clear now and I suppose I agree with most of it, probably everything in fact. Thanks for clearing that up.

No true offence taken, BTW. It was more a figure of speech... 0:)

But that was my point (BTW I provided a cite to Jedbawne as a specific example in one of my earlier posts - you must have missed that). The serious review and reflection upon these is very recent. It was indeed rather ignored during the prior four, five decades since the war. So this isn't as ingrained in the memory of the younger population as similar crimes are, say, among the German population.

Hey, I mentioned Neighbours at the very beginning - I was referring to your citation of Jedwabne all along! My argument is that in fact the Jedwabne incident is ingrained in the memory (of the younger population!) here much more than almost anything else connected to WWII! In fact, there's hardly anything in 20th century history that is mentioned more often. Perhaps the Martial Law - the only other subject "of old" that still stirs up a lot of controversy. Still, I'd be ready to make a large bet that your average teenager won't really know what the Martial Law was - but they will certainly be able to explain what Jedwabne was all about. (I'm saying this based on personal experience with teenagers as a teacher.)

[Maciek]

Oh man, I've promised myself to stay away from The Diner so many times! But it always sucks me back in... Let's hope I'll manage to keep from posting more after this last time... 0:)

After giving the matter more thought (this is a very thought provoking thread for me - well, at least some of it ) I have three more things I want to comment upon (actually, I had four but I already forgot what the other two were ). I'll do my best to keep it short (I don't have all the time in the world either, you know ):

1.

My simple point was that Florestan made Poland out to be some exceptionally virtuous country.

I really think you're misrepresenting Andrei's thought here (or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what he meant). I think he really only had Poland's geopolitical situation in mind - what he said had little to do with how the Polish population behaved towards the extermination of Jews. It had, perhaps, to do with how the Polish government and Home Army reacted to it - but here you have no argument. Florestan simply mentioned the fact that, attacked by superior German and Soviet forces, the country defended itself vehemently (the German army lost about 30% of its tanks and armormed vehicles!) despite being renounced by its allies (France and Great Britain who, BTW, were quite quick to declare war on Germany - they just didn't act on it). All this only 20 years after the country had regained independence after almost 150 years under Russian, Prussian and Austrian boots. It remained occupied by Germany and Soviet Russia from 1939 till at least 1945. On the political arena, I don't quite see what morally reprehensible act Poland (understood here in a political sense) committed in that specific period - it never cooperated with the invaders (I don't think it ever officially surrendered), it maintained a well-organized underground penal system supervised by the government in exile (German officers were tried and regularly executed) etc. etc. Eventually it was defeated when the allies abandoned it again at the end of the war: after having literally thousands of Poles fight in the allied armies (there were more than 200 000 Polish soldiers fighting for the Western armies by the end of the war)! In that sense it may not have been the only moral winner but it certainly was one. (I realize that many countries have had difficult histories but it is also quite obvious that many have suffered more than others, and Poland is among those who have had far more than its share of suffering. Andrzej Szczypiorski's bitter formula - Poland as "the joke God tells to the world" - seems very appropriate.)

I'm running out of time so I'll really have to be quick now:

2.
It's important to remember about all the psychological mechanisms which make forgetting about these atrocities very easy. It really isn't a pleasant experience to live side by side with a nation and then to see it destroyed - without being able to do very much about it. Well, the fact is: you could do something about it but not without risking your life, or in fact without simply giving it up (literally thousands of people were killed in Poland for helping Jews). If you ask me, giving up your life in such a situation is really the only appropriate decision because I don't think my own life is in any way more valuable than any other person's - so if there's the slightest chance I can save someone by risking it, I should do it! But would I do it (do I do it)? I'm not sure of that, and I'm quite certain many, many people wouldn't - and didn't. But they had to live with the thought that they are not doing anything (or not doing everything) to save these people who had always lived next to them. That's where denial comes in. It's the same as with the allied reaction to Polish intelligence reports about what happened in the concentration camps: there is nothing really all that odd in disbelief. Because if they believed it, they would have to accept some sort of responsibility for not doing everything possible to prevent it. So I think the reason many of these atrocities are so easily denied is, paradoxically, a very noble one: guilt.

(This might be gibberish but I don't have the time to analyze what I'm writing...)

3.
I'm not all that sure about abandoning all "collective" nouns such as "Poles", "Germans", "nation" etc. For one thing: people use these words every day and somehow manage to communicate - so they apparently do mean something. What's more, I believe sociology is not some wacko cult but a science. And what about theories of "crowd psychology" and "collective behavior"? If a mob lynches someone they do it as a group rather than as a number of individuals. Yes, each one of them is responsible - because no one countered it - but they did do it as a group! That is very important when looking at things such as pogroms.

[Florestan]

My simple point was that Florestan made Poland out to be some exceptionally virtuous country.

I've never said anything of the sort.

I really think you're misrepresenting Andrei's thought here (or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what he meant). I think he really only had Poland's geopolitical situation in mind - what he said had little to do with how the Polish population behaved towards the extermination of Jews. It had, perhaps, to do with how the Polish government and Home Army reacted to it - but here you have no argument. Florestan simply mentioned the fact that, attacked by superior German and Soviet forces, the country defended itself vehemently (the German army lost about 30% of its tanks and armormed vehicles!) despite being renounced by its allies (France and Great Britain who, BTW, were quite quick to declare war on Germany - they just didn't act on it). All this only 20 years after the country had regained independence after almost 150 years under Russian, Prussian and Austrian boots. It remained occupied by Germany and Soviet Russia from 1939 till at least 1945. On the political arena, I don't quite see what morally reprehensible act Poland (understood here in a political sense) committed in that specific period - it never cooperated with the invaders (I don't think it ever officially surrendered), it maintained a well-organized underground penal system supervised by the government in exile (German officers were tried and regularly executed) etc. etc. Eventually it was defeated when the allies abandoned it again at the end of the war: after having literally thousands of Poles fight in the allied armies (there were more than 200 000 Polish soldiers fighting for the Western armies by the end of the war)! In that sense it may not have been the only moral winner but it certainly was one. (I realize that many countries have had difficult histories but it is also quite obvious that many have suffered more than others, and Poland is among those who have had far more than its share of suffering. Andrzej Szczypiorski's bitter formula - Poland as "the joke God tells to the world" - seems very appropriate.)

Maciek, this is precisely what I had in mind.

[MishaK]

Well I'm glad we've cleared up all those misunderstandings then.

Speaking of Poland, you can hear Anderszewski playing playing Szymanowski's Symphony No.4 with the CSO conducted by Andrei Boreyko here: http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=15,1,50,4

[Sean]

Great post there Maciek. I like international affairs very much and wish I knew more about East Europe generally.

[Maciek]

Thanks, Sean.

Speaking of Poland, you can hear Anderszewski playing playing Szymanowski's Symphony No.4 with the CSO conducted by Andrei Boreyko here: http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=15,1,50,4

Oh, WOW!!! Thanks for THAT!!!!!!!

[Maciek]

Sean, not sure if you're actually looking for anything to read but I just found out that the best book on the subject has actually been translated into English: The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1948 by Krystyna Kersten. I wholeheartedly recommend it, it really is, without any doubt, the best thing written on the subject. It covers pretty much all of the essential stuff going on between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin (over the Polish leaders' heads). If you're more into cultural and/or social history, though, be warned: the book covers exclusively political matters and does not touch on other things at all! But (probably because of that) it's an excellent in-depth historical study. Obviously some new information has surfaced since the 1980s when it was written but nothing that would make the book in any way obsolete: it is still standard reading for anyone interested in the subject.

[Sean]

Many thanks- I need recommendations in this field, and I may have some appropriate reading time coming up. The closest I've got to Poland is Berlin, which isn't very close.